James Harden leads all contenders with 31.3 credibility per game, able-bodied avant-garde of Giannis Antetokounmpo's 27.6 PPG and Anthony Davis' 27.4 PPG. That he aswell leads all except Westbrook in assists per adventurous -- acceptance amphitheatre alongside one of the game's a lot of able distributors in Chris Paul -- establishes Harden as the absolute favorite.But if you're searching for a gap in Harden's résumé, his acreage ambition percentage, a banal 44.8 percent, lags about to that of the added leaders. LeBron James, Davis, Antetokounmpo and Durant all anxiety in at over 50 percent, with Curry at 49.0, Kyrie Irving at 48.6 and Jimmy Butler at 47.6 percent NBA Live Coins. A allotment of the favorites, alone Westbrook joins Harden in sub-45 percent territory.Injuries could accommodation the antagonism of Paul, who has put calm an aberrant assay but has absent 17 games. Curry was alone for 15 games, a bulk that adeptness be too top for some voters to accreditation first- and second-place honors.If Antetokounmpo wants to anatomy his case for MVP, box-score stats is the abode to do it. He's currently averaging 27.8 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game. Aback 1965, alone 5 players admission accumulated a 25-10-5 baseline, and every one of them -- Westbrook, Barkley, Bird, Abdul-Jabbar and Chamberlain -- won the award.

Advanced metrics accredit us to accretion attenuate distinctions a allotment of MVP candidates who all admission agitative numbers. Let's alpha with ESPN's complete plus-minus, which takes into commemoration how a player's aggregation performs if he's on the floor, while demography into commemoration both the four teammates with whom he's administration the cloister and the 5 guys on the added side.Our complete plus-minus leaders advancing out of the All-Star breach are, in bottomward order, Paul, Harden, Butler, Curry and Antetokounmpo. If sorted for complete plus-minus wins, which factors in the bulk of time spent on the court, those after-effects are reordered as Butler (who leads all MVP contenders in commemoration played this season), Westbrook, Harden, Antetokounmpo and James.If win shares -- which measures the estimated bulk of wins a amateur contributes to his aggregation -- are added to your liking, the leaderboard reads Harden, Antetokounmpo, Davis, James and Butler. On a per-48 minute basis, it's Harden, Paul, Curry, Davis and Antetokounmpo. Kevin Pelton's WARP metric, which measures what a amateur is commemoration about to a advancement player, lists James as the league's a lot of admired player NBA MT Coins. He leads Harden by the narrowest of margins, followed by Karl-Anthony Towns, Antetokounmpo and Davis.Defensively, Davis and Antetokounmpo advance all the aloft contenders in arresting win shares and arresting complete plus-minus.